CHAPTER VIII.
"Shake hands with Mr.Dillingham, Quib," said Gottlieb as I one day unexpectedly entered the latter's office.

"We have a matter on hand in which he is interested." "Glad to know you, Mr.Quibble," quoth the client, extending a rather soft hand.

"Your name is well known to me, although I have never personally had the pleasure of your acquaintance." "The future will, I trust, remedy that," I replied, not particularly impressed with the stranger's features or expression, but conscious somehow of the smell of money about him.

For he was short and fat and wore a brown surtout and a black stovepipe hat, and his little gray eyes peeped out of full, round, red cheeks.

On his lower lip we wore a tiny goatee.
"As I was saying," he continued, turning again to my partner, "we all of us make mistakes and I made the biggest one when I annexed the present Mrs.D.I was a young fool hardly out of my teens, and the sight of a pretty face and a tearful story of woe were too much for me.